Latin pronunciation vs writing

[Timianus]

My interest in Late Antiquity has led me into exploring the "dark ages" in Britain or "sub-roman" Britain. I have noticed a few instances of naming conventions being adopted from Latin, but with the declinitive endings dropped off. For instance, Eboracum becomes Eoforwic. The Vottadini tribe become the Goddodin. On paper the names seem to bear only a superficial resemblance to one another. But, linguistically, not much separates "Eborac" and "Eforwic" or "Wottadin" ["Vs" are "Wu"] and "Goddodin"

This got me thinking as to whether when spoken, native speakers dropped the grammatical endings off of Latin words. This might also explain some of the name shortening in the later era: e.g. Constantin instead of Constantinianus. I guess I am wondering did the Romans even vocalize these endings, or was this just "formal written Latin."

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Honestly a lot of Latine by the Late Era was probably formal or only spoken in the court at Ravenna.

[Diocle]

Honestly a lot of Latine by the Late Era was probably formal or only spoken in the court at Ravenna.

Evan, you're joking of course, ..... aren't you?

[Urselius]

Early Welsh saw the dropping of endings that had been used in Old British, thus Maglocunus (lit. great dog = magnus + canis) became Maelgwn. Therefore Latin names and phrases would be treated in the same way, Constantinus became Custennin, and Gerontius became Gereint.

However, because Latin was an acquired language by Irish, British and Anglo-Saxon churchmen, the original Latin pronunciation of Cicero was preserved. On the continent Latin slipped into early French, Italian etc. and its pronunciation was affected by the vernacular tongues. In later times continental churchmen looked down on the Latin used in the British Isles not knowing that it was in fact much purer than their own.

[Diocle]

I have always suspected some 'Britishness' in Caius Iulius .... :whistle: